Puente de Arganzuela and the Urban Beach

Why is it significant?

In front of you, two great cones of twisted steel mesh lie across the river like a pair of giant seashells, or a corkscrew built for a giant's bottle. This is the Puente de Arganzuela, one of the signature pieces of Madrid Río.

Key Facts

Open the walk

In front of you, two great cones of twisted steel mesh lie across the river like a pair of giant seashells, or a corkscrew built for a giant's bottle. This is the Puente de Arganzuela, one of the signature pieces of Madrid Río.

It was designed by the French architect Dominique Perrault, the man behind the National Library of France in Paris and Madrid's own tennis arena, the Caja Mágica. Walk inside it and the steel ribbons spiral around you, the light flickering through the mesh as you climb gently over the water and down towards the parks of the south bank. It opened along with the rest of the park, at the beginning of the 2010s.

And next to it lies something that makes visitors laugh out loud the first time they hear its name: the playa, Madrid's beach. There is no sand and no sea, of course. Instead there are shallow pools and fountains where jets and mists of water rise from the ground, and on a summer afternoon half the children of the neighbourhood are running through them.

For a city that sits around three hundred kilometres from the nearest coast, and where August afternoons can pass forty degrees, this is serious business. Families spread towels on the grass, teenagers stage water fights, and older Madrileños sit on the benches pretending not to be envious. Madrid has always made fun of its lack of water, and here it decided to make fun with it instead.

Look at the trees around you, too: this part of the park, the Parque de la Arganzuela, sits on land that was once rail yards, sheds and the edge of an industrial district. Further downstream, that industrial past is still standing. Follow the river south-east along the gardens to the next bridge, the Puente de Praga.